Walking along a narrow muddy causeway by a little river overhung with willows, girls ahead of her in single file and girls in single file behind, Miriam drearily recognised that it was June. The month of roses, she thought, and looked out across the flat green fields. It was not easy to walk along the slippery pathway. On one side was the little grey river, on the other long wet grass repelling and depressing. Not far ahead was the roadway which led, she supposed to the farm where they were to drink new milk. She would have to walk with someone when they came to the road, and talk. She wondered whether this early morning walk would come, now, every day. Her heart sank at the thought. It had been too hot during the last few days for any going out at midday, and she had hoped that the strolling in the garden, sitting about under the chestnut tree and in the little wooden garden room off the saal had taken the place of walks for the summer. She had got up reluctantly, at the surprise of the very early gonging. Mademoiselle had guessed it would be a "milk-walk." Pausing in the bright light of the top landing as Mademoiselle ran downstairs she had seen through the landing window the deep peak of a distant gable casting an unfamiliar shadow--a shadow sloping the wrong way, a morning shadow. She remembered the first time, the only time, she had noticed such a shadow--getting up very early one morning while Harriett and all the household were still asleep--and how she had stopped dressing and gazed at it as it stood there cool and quiet and alone across the mellow face of a neighbouring stone porch--had suddenly been glad that she was alone and had wondered why that shadowed porch-peak was more beautiful than all the summer things she knew and felt at that moment that nothing could touch or trouble her again. She could not find anything of that feeling in the early day outside Hanover. She was hemmed in, and the fields were so sad she could not bear to look at them. The sun had disappeared since they came out. The sky was grey and low and it seemed warmer already than it had been in the midday sun during the last few days. One of the girls on ahead hummed the refrain of a student-song:-- "In der Ecke steht er Seinen Schnurbart dreht er Siehst du wohl, da steht er schon Der versoff'ne Schwiegersohn." Miriam felt very near the end of endurance. Elsa Speier who was just behind her, became her inevitable companion when they reached the roadway. A farmhouse appeared about a quarter of a mile away. Miriam's sense of her duties closed in on her. Trying not to see Elsa's elaborate clothes and the profile in which she could find no meaning, no hope, no rest, she spoke to her. "Do you like milk, Elsa?" she said cheerfully. Elsa began swinging her lace-covered parasol. "If I like milk?" she repeated presently, and flashed mocking eyes in Miriam's direction. Despair touched Miriam's heart. "Some people don't," she said.